Staff Writer
In the biggest strike by screenwriters in the industry in more than 60 years, Hollywood actors have joined the action.
Most US film and television productions came to an end at midnight in Los Angeles when approximately 160,000 performers stopped their shifts.
The Screen Actors Guild (SAG) is urging the top streaming services to accept a more equitable profit split and improved working conditions.
Additionally, it aims to safeguard actors against being replaced by digital clones.
The union wants assurances that actors won’t be replaced by computer-generated looks and voices or artificial intelligence (AI).
Actors are unable to work during the strike and are even unable to promote their own films.
As a result, celebrities Cillian Murphy, Matt Damon, and Emily Blunt fled the Oppenheimer premiere on Thursday night in London as the strike was announced.
Christopher Nolan, the film’s director, informed the theater crowd that they were “off to write their picket signs” and said he supported them in their fight.
A number of stars, including Better Call Saul’s Bob Odenkirk, Sex and the City’s Cynthia Nixon, and Hollywood legend Jamie Lee Curtis, expressed their support for the strike on Instagram.
Picketing will start outside of Netflix’s California offices on Friday morning and then move to Paramount, Warner Bros., and Disney.
The major studios have put out what they refer to as a “ground-breaking proposal” to address concerns about the use of AI that would safeguard performers’ digital likenesses and demand their permission before any adjustments or uses of digital copies in performances.
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The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) offered, but the union rejected it.
Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, national executive director and principal negotiator for the SAG, deemed it intolerable.
They suggest that our background actors should be allowed to be scanned, receive payment for a single day’s work, and their firm should own that scan of their picture, their likeness, and should be free to use it forever, he said. “If you believe that is a novel idea, I advise you to reconsider.”
The strike will make a significant amount of work for movies in production difficult. Actors won’t be available for reshoots or other crucial steps in the filmmaking process, even when filming has already been finished.
TV series that are still in production would likewise mainly have to cease, but in certain situations, producers and actors may strike side agreements to keep things moving.
Leading Hollywood figures won’t be able to go to events to support recent and upcoming movies. There is a chance that events like the Emmys and Comic-Con will be postponed or reduced back.
The AMPTP stated that the strike was “certainly not the outcome we hoped for as studios cannot operate without the performers that bring our TV shows and films to life”.
According to the union’s statement, “the union regrettably chose a path that will result in financial hardship for countless thousands of people who depend on the industry.”
The Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, or SAG-AFTRA, is the official name of the union.
performers should receive higher base pay and residuals, which are payments provided to performers from repeats of movies and TV shows they’ve appeared in, as one of its requests of the streaming services.
Tens of thousands of actors who earn considerably less for supporting roles than their A-list counterparts are participating in the walkout.
“In the old model, they get residuals based on success,” Kim Masters, editor-in-chief of the Hollywood Reporter, told the BBC. Because the streamers don’t share, they are unable to learn what is happening behind the scenes in the new model.
The strike, according to SAG President Fran Drescher, occurred at a “very seminal moment” for performers in the business.
She asserted that “what’s happening to us is happening across all fields of labor” when companies prioritize Wall Street and avarice and disregard the vital contributors who keep the machine running.
Since May 2, 11,500 members of the Writers Guild of America have been on strike in support of better wages and working conditions.
Some authors have chosen to work on assignments that are beyond the scope of the agreement between the guild and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers.
The two unions are staging their first “double strike” since 1960, when Ronald Reagan, then an actor, served as the SAG’s president before he entered politics and became president of the United States. The most recent actor walkout happened in 1980.
Disney CEO Bob Iger said the expectations of both actors and writers were unworkable and harmful to an industry still rebuilding from the pandemic during a summit of industry leaders at an Idaho resort prior to the SAG’s statement on Thursday.
I find it to be quite unsettling, Mr. Iger said. “Adding to that disruption at this time is the worst thing in the world.”
The Directors Guild of America, a third union, won a contract in June and will not take part.
